Crochet Gifts for Kids with Epilepsy (Purple Stitch Project)

Crocheting gifts for a good cause is a great use of your stitching skills. It puts a smile on someone’s face to receive a handcrafted item. It comforts someone in their time of need. And it feels really good for a crafter to know that this thing that they love doing is offering that to someone. You heal yourself by stitching to heal someone else. There are many, many options for great organizations through which you can crochet for charity. I thought I’d let you know about a new one called the Purple Stitch Project, which provides hand crafted gifts to children epilepsy and other seizure disorders.

The Purple Stitch Project

The website for this project explains: “Purple Stitch Project (PSP) is a web-based charitable organization to benefit babies, children and teens with epilepsy.”

There are three main goals of the project:

Provide handmade gifts to children with seizure disorders

Raise awareness about epilepsy

Raise money to support research grants and epilepsy programs

Vickie Howell

The Purple Stitch Project was launched by Vickie Howell, the knit and crochet designer who you may know from her patterns, books, blog, workshops and/or Sheep(ish) yarn line. Vickie started PSP because childhood epilepsy is a condition that is close to her heart. In 2011 her youngest son was diagnosed with epilepsy. Her son is getting stronger and better with each day but it’s been an up-and-down rollercoaster trying to deal with his diagnosis. Because of this situation, Vickie met many other children who were dealing with seizure disorders and she wanted to be able to do something to bring a smile to their tough days. Thus the project was born.

How You Can Help

The Purple Stitch Project is accepting donations of knit, crocheted and hand-sewn gifts for children with epilepsy and other seizure disorders. They have teamed up with Craftsy to offer more than one dozen free patterns for handmade gifts (include a pattern for the crocheted purple ninja that you see above). You can use the free patterns to make gifts for children with epilepsy. You can give the items to someone you know who has a condition or send it to the Purple Stitch Project to be distributed to a child with a seizure disorder.

Here are some additional ways that you can help the Purple Stitch Project:

Give hearts on Craftsy. “Craftsy has generously offered to donate $1 for every 10 “heart” clicks a Purple Stitch Project item gets. Proceeds will be distributed to local and national Epilepsy programs!”

Upload your own finished item to Craftsy and try to get hearts for it as well.